


Practical

by misura



Category: Crusade
Genre: Gen, Pets, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A geek and his kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practical

Max Eilerson gets a cat because he doesn't want to get a dog.

Dogs require daily walks. Dogs are noisy - they bark and whine and with Max's luck, they'll probably completely fail to get along with the other dogs in the neighborhood, to say nothing of Mrs. Bergen's three cats. Dogs try to lick your face when you're really just leaning in for a better look.

Cats, on the other hand, don't require daily walks. They might require a litter, but that's what Max has got a cleaning service for. (He might, he supposes, offer to give them a small raise in exchange for this extra service they will be called upon to perform.) Cats are quiet. They don't bark or whine, and Max imagines he might grow used to that purring thing they do, if it comes to that.

Really, it's beyond Max why anyone in their right minds wouldn't get a cat.

 

Because he's read that, as with humans, a cat's character is shaped in its youth, Max gets a kitten.

It looks like a tiny ball of fluff, and the noise it is capable of producing is a little alarming, frankly, but Max picks up another few reference books from the library and then orders some kitten food and kitten toys and kitten blankets and a very special kitten basket that's on sale and looks quite practical. The internet is a wonderful thing, really, even if it's total rubbish for fact-checking.

He doesn't give much thought to a name. It seems superfluous; he's not going to be able to train the kitten to come when called, so what's the point?

And then he's out drinking with a few people whom he needs to think of him favorably for the next few weeks or so, until the projects have been assigned, and one of them asks him why he's been so much more cheerful lately.

It's an absurd question, not in the least because Max _hasn't_ been any more cheerful lately. Under any other circumstances, he'd be telling the man to mind his own damn business. As it is, he mutters a barely polite reply.

And that (he discovers the next day at university) is how he ends up with a fake girlfriend.

(Plus, of course, a name for the kitten.)


End file.
